


The Rules Are the First To Go

by samalander



Series: Lenna [2]
Category: ST:AOS - Fandom
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Genderbending, Implied Relationships, M/M, Mirror Universe, implied Kirk/Sulu, unrequited Chekov/Sulu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-08
Updated: 2011-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:19:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The brawl goes on and at the end, there are five warriors left. They're the <i>Spartoi</i> and they help Cadmus found Thebes. No woman can found her own empire, and she can't take one over single handedly, either. We have friends. We need <i>Spartoi</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rules Are the First To Go

**Author's Note:**

> Or, The Story Of How Pavel Chekov Joined Jim and Lenna
> 
> A sequel to [In A Vandal's Mood](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/3443.html), but could probably stand alone if you want it to.
> 
> Thanks to [](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/profile)[**theoreticalpixy**](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/) for the cheerleading and the beta. Any mistakes within are my own.  
> 

_**FIC: The Rules Are the First To Go**_  
 **Title:** The Rules Are the First To Go  
 **Author:** [](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/profile)[**_samalander**](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/)  
 **Fandom:** ST:AOS  
 **Rating:** A mild NC-17/Hard R  
 **Wordcount:** 5,220  
 **Warnings:** MirrorVerse, genderswap (always-a-girl!McCoy), non/dubcon, murder, sex with a minor, kidnapping, threat of torture, behavior that may or may not count as domestic abuse.  
 **Characters/Pairings:** Kirk/Lady!McCoy, Chekov/Mitchell, unrequited Chekov/Sulu, implied Kirk/Sulu.  
 **Summary:** "The brawl goes on and at the end, there are five warriors left. They're the _Spartoi_ and they help Cadmus found Thebes. No woman can found her own empire, and she can't take one over single handedly, either. We have friends. We need _Spartoi_."  
Or, The Story Of How Pavel Chekov Joined Jim and Lenna

A sequel to [In A Vandal's Mood](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/3443.html), but could probably stand alone if you want it to.

Thanks to [](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/profile)[**theoreticalpixy**](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/) for the cheerleading and the beta. Any mistakes within are my own.  
 **Disclaimer:** Star Trek is property of people who are not me.

In a kinder place, Andrei Chekov would have been called a mobster- he ran the Bratva with unflappable panache and brutal knives. His son, Pavel, would succeed him one day, take control of the empire-within-the-empire. But Pavel didn't want to; he wanted to fly, to serve Starfleet.

Andrei beat his son black and blue when Pavel said it, so when Pavel decided to stab him, he thought he was making a point.

He aimed the blade carefully, meaning to miss the old man's windpipe and arteries but still leave a scar that would raise questions for years to come.

He left his father unconscious and bleeding from the neck.

Perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise when Pavel woke up the next morning with his limbs bound and four men standing over him. But it did. And he knew what they would do, what people did to 13-year-old boys whose bedrooms they invaded.

Andrei entered the room, gauze packed against his neck, as the last man had shuddered his foul release across Pavel's chest and onto his face. Andrei smiled at his son, still tied and thrashing, come leaking from his abused ass and striping his torso.

"Next time you stab someone, Pasha," his father growled, "make sure you kill them. Others won't be so kind."

Pavel just stared coldly at his father as he signaled for the other men to leave. "Now clean yourself up, you're a disgrace."

He was tied to the bed for 3 hours, thrashing and cutting his wrists on the harsh ropes, before the maid came to let him free.

Four days later, when he was healed and walking right, Pavel aimed the same blade at his father's heart. They both stared at the protrusion, watching the gold inlaid dragon tinge red with Andrei's blood.

Pavel was on the shuttle to San Francisco before the body had cooled.

\---

Jim Kirk's tragic flaw, his _hamartia_ , was that he wanted things.

Lenna McCoy knew about _want_ , but she also knew about _get_ and _have_ and how they never quite quench the want. Lenna had wanted before - she had wanted a family with Jackson, a life and a medical practice and her rightful place at the head of the table. But that had taught her the final lesson - never want anything that people can ruin. And people could ruin anything.

Kirk, on the other hand, had never had a damn thing. He'd grown up alone and poor and being conscripted was the best damn thing that ever happened to the fool, fight it though he may.

\---

Chekov would like to have said he cut a bloody swath through the academy, but in reality, he kept his head down for the first year. He was barely 14, he was small, and he was cute. He saw the leers and the suggestive motions. He was a fucking genius, he was the heir to the Chekov fortune, he was a walking target.

So he threw in with a protector early.

Gary Mitchell was an older boy, a second-year, one of the many who orbited the meteoric force that was Jim Kirk. He was also one of the many who made the suggestive motions and cat called when Pavel walked by his seat in the mess.

Pavel pretended not to hear, but in his mind he made lists of people who would die slowly, blood dripping into their lungs as they gasped for air. (Pavel wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to be _nice_. He imagined it was a lot like weakness, and deep down where no one could get it, he imagined the face of his mother, smiling and weak, dying as her life leaked from a thousand wounds. Better to be alive then to know nice.)

But he courted Gary, sending him one of Will Hadley's fingers when Hadley scored better than him on a test, with a note.

 _This is what I do for my friends._ and he signed it in cyrillic, Па́вел, thinking absently that his father would be proud, if his father weren't buried.

Mitchell took the hint, and when McKenna turned up dead after a particularly nasty sabotage of one of Chekov's simulator tests, it was with Pavel's cyrillic name carved into her face and not Mitchell's standard one. But everyone knew, anyway. It was the Academy; the only secrets were kept by the dead. And, apparently, Jim Kirk.

Pavel watched Kirk, strutting and preening across campus with Lenna McCoy on his arm, and he knew that the golden boy would be a captain someday, that his smile belied the nothing behind his eyes and the knives in his sleeves. He knew to avoid Kirk, and Mitchell never pressed the issue.

Michell just wanted Pavel's ass twice a week in exchange for his protection, so Pavel lay back and thought of Russia, his cock usually hanging limp between his legs. He didn't know why he never enjoyed it - he knew he should learn to fake such things. But with Gary, it didn't matter. What mattered was they were both getting what they wanted.

\---

Lenna sipped her wine, bare ass braced against the counter, as Jim knelt before her, licking and teasing at her clit, his hands securely clasped behind his back as though she'd tied them. She liked him like this, proud and defiant, but docile at the same time. Jim was her own little hurricane in a bottle, her controlled chaos. She had trained him into the hardness he showed the world, spent hours with a whip and a paddle until his blue eyes dulled and he could finally look like the liar he wasn't.

He'd thanked her then, sobbing out his gratitude as he curled into a ball at her feet, letting the last of his pathetic _need_ flow out.

He loved her, and if she was still capable of love, she thought she might agree that it was the right way to feel.

In public, he was the leader, the one that people feared because his eyes were dead. People whispered about him behind their hands, how Jim Kirk had tamed Lenna McCoy, how he was going to be the next great captain, the man to beat.

And they tried. They tried to beat him, to win against him, but Jim seemed to prevail. He seemed hardwired to survive against any odds. Lenna made sure he took care of himself, made sure he could incapacitate an attacker, and made sure he wouldn't show mercy when they came. That lesson had cost her Reyes and Peterson and Boone, all now rotting under the earth they'd sprung from. She'd had them attack and attack and attack, and every time Jim would stop them, put them out, and walk away. Finally he'd had to kill them. He'd had to.

He'd come to Lenna after he took down Boone, blood fresh on his hands from his first kill. She'd led him quietly to the shower, letting the water turn crimson with his conquest as it ran over him.

She'd watched as his face turned to tissue paper, as it dissolved under the warm onslaught and his tears mingled with the liquid.

Later there was punishment; for weakness, for slowness, for not being enough, never being enough for her.

They were the last tears Jim Kirk ever shed.

And now he had come to her, a supplicant on his knees.

"Someone killed Mitchell, Lenna. Someone killed him in his bed."

She'd sipped the wine and gestured to herself. "Show me what vengeance is worth."

\---

Pavel killed Gary on a rainy Thursday, mostly to make a point.

He'd been thinking for a while about throwing in with another man, a pilot called Sulu, and Mitchell had found out. The first backhand stinging across Pavel's cheek was expected. The subsequent rain of fists was not.

"You're mine," Gary had growled, his face feral and savage. "You don't get to make choices."

Pavel wore the bruises on his face rather than let someone heal him. Let the masses think Mitchell had uglied him up, let them think what they wanted.

After Gary finished that Thursday, a week after the beating, he rolled off Pavel with a grunt.

"Still thinking about your pretty pilot?"

Pavel smiled and reached for his shirt, his hand closing on the knife he kept in a sheath next to his heart. The same blade that had ended his father's life, that had removed Hadley's finger. Pavel loved his blade, and he loved the soft tearing sound Gary's throat made as the dragon moved across it, dancing in glee as it did its work.

Pavel watched, scientifically interested, as realization flowered across Gary's face. His little toy had teeth.

Gary should have seen it coming. Pavel knew his scores on the psy tests were off the chart. But apparently his protector had never felt it necessary to peek into Pavel's brain.

And now his life was congeling around him, in deep crimson pools.

Pavel spit on the corpse, or almost corpse, it didn't matter, and left the room.

\---

Word got around quickly about Mitchell's death, and Pavel's failure to throw in with a new protector. He was 15, he'd been at the academy for two years. He didn't need another hand to feed him. He could fend for himself.

That didn't stop him from lusting after Sulu a little. The man was tall and elegant and smart. He was one of the few people at the academy on who Pavel felt might actually possess some basic human goodness.

Not a lot - the man wasn't a pushover, or he'd be dead. But he had something about him that sang to Chekov, something that made him feel at home. (Not safe, never safe, safe may as well be _Kolinahr_ for all Chekov cared: unattainable.)

It started like most assassination attempts: Chekov had the distinct feeling that there was someone in his dorm room, that someone was waiting for him, so he went in with a knife drawn, on the balls of his feet, ready to show whatever bastard it was that Pavel Chekov was a _Russian_. The people who knew him called him Змей now, _zmej_ , and apparently this person needed it explained, in slow, shallow cuts, exactly what ‘dragon' meant.

He was not expecting the hypospray that pricked his neck, sharp and cool. He tried to fight through it, surged against the anesthesia, but the hands that looped under his armpits were strong and steady and the last thing Chekov thought before the dark took him was, _I will kill this Cossack, slow and_

\---

Many things could be - and had been - said about Lenna McCoy, but her momma would see her burn in an agony booth before anyone called her a bad hostess. So when Kyle and Riley (good boys, those two, loyal to Jim and dumb enough to not see the marionette strings) delivered the prone body of Pavel Chekov to her apartment, she had a bottle of vodka chilling and a fresh Vatrushka on the table of her kitchen.

She still bound the kid to the coffee table, hands tying expert knots and securing him double and triple - he was a slippery one, harder to kill than Rasputin. Not that Lenna had tried. Much. She pressed the second hypo - the one that would wake him up - to the kids neck, palmed his blade, and went to find Jim.

Jim was wringing his hands in the kitchen when Lenna entered, pacing between the table and the stove like a wind-up doll, eyes on the security feed and the flickering image of Chekov's prone body.

"What the fuck, Jim?"

He cast his eyes down. It was what he should do in her house, he should be pleased that she left him stand and wear clothes, but really, a naked man was all kinds of inconvenient, dick flopping all around and getting in the oatmeal when he served it. So Jim got pants.

"Are we gonna torture him?"

Lenna sighed. Fucking feeble Jim. Good for nothing, heart of gold, do gooder Jim. "He only looks innocent. He killed Mitchell."

"He's fifteen."

"And a murderer."

Jim fixed her with a stare and Lenna swore she saw something spark faintly in his eyes. "Because that's something new in this company? Let's not get precious."

She sat at the table, mentally racing to find a way to explain this fucking Universe to the gentle bull who just wanted to sit under his cork tree and smell the flowers.

"What do you know of the founding of Thebes?"

Jim shrugged. "Ancient city, probably happened near some water?"

"No, Jimmy, the _myth_." Lenna saw his potential, really she did, but how could someone so smart be so fundimentaly dumb about simple things like the founding of major empires?

"Okay," she drew her dagger and began absently fingering the blade. "Long story short. Guy called Cadmus. Sister gets kidnapped, he decides she's worth saving. Talks to some Gods, makes a lot of dumb moves, gets all his men killed."

"Are you saying--"

"I'm saying shut up til I finish or you'll be in a posture collar and yoke for a week."

He shut up, but there was that what-is-it behind his eyes again. Lenna shifted position, admiring the carving work on the blade she'd taken from Chekov in contrast to her own. "So, Cadmus. Gets his men killed by a serpent or a dragon or something. Athena - goddess of wisdom to the Greeks - tells him to take the serpent's teeth and plant them in the ground." Lenna knows this story, she loves this story. Her mother used to tell it to her at bedtime, between the rape of Leda by the swan and the castration of Cronus. "He does it, because Cadmus was kinda trusting like that. So the teeth sprout into warriors, like they do in Greek myths. And they're advancing on Cadmus, who is like you in that he pisses himself. But, he's smarter than you. He picks up a shiny rock - that's you, Jim, you're the rock, and I'm the hotter version of Cadmus - he throws it in the midst of the warriors. And they start to fight."

She stood and stretched, pacing to the sink to draw water from the tap. His eyes tracked her, watched the muscles in her neck and jaw tense and relax as she swallowed. "The brawl goes on and at the end, there are five warriors left. They're the _Spartoi_ and they help Cadmus found Thebes. No woman can found her own empire, and she can't take one over single handedly, either. We have friends. We need _Spartoi_."

She was done, but Jim didn't speak. His mind was whirring, tumbling over the facts, and Lenna could hear it. Finally, he opened his mouth, glancing at her for permission. She nodded.

"What happened to the rock?"

Lenna laughed and crossed to him, reaching up to cup his face. "The myths don't say, but if it were me? I'd keep it in my pocket."

He seemed pleased with this answer, so she kissed him briefly. He melted into the kiss- it was one of her favorite things about Jim, how just the smallest gestures of affection brought him to his knees.

"And what about Mitchell?"

Lenna smiled. "Mitchell would have been a worthy Spartoi. But Mitchell is worm food, and now we move on."

"Lenna-"

She spun on her heel and backhanded him, the stinging song of flesh-on-flesh ringing through the kitchen.

"James. Don't forget who actually runs this show."

He dropped his eyes again, and then slowly lowered himself to his knees. Shaky hands took hers and held them to his lips, where he pressed a repentant kiss to each of her palms. She nodded. He was learning.

"Now. We watch."

\---

Pavel's first instinct, waking tied to the table, was to panic.

 _Too familiar. Too much like-_ but he didn't show it, he kept his breathing together, didn't tense in anticipation of the men who came to him before, didn't think that this was revenge for the murder of his father. He knew it wasn't.

He had to know that.

The hand on his pulse was too gentle, too calm and cool for this to be a repeat.

"You're awake," the voice said, and Chekov knew that voice, he knew who he was with. He cracked an eyelid and Sulu spun into focus. Chekov tried not to show surprise, because the place was opulent to an obscene degree, all thick fabrics on the walls, framing decorative blades. It wasn't Sulu's home, it was nowhere on campus. Pavel let his mind weave names of people who might have a place like this, and came up empty of any of Sulu's allies.

His blade was missing, the cold sharpness of the dragon gone from his heart.

Somehow it was worse than when he was thirteen, because then he knew who was pulling the strings, knew that despite his anger, Andrei would never kill his heir. Chekov had no such faith in Sulu, despite his surveillance. Sulu was linked to the death of Galloway last year, and they had been friends, in public. Chekov wondered, idly, if this was about Gary, or if his courting of Sulu had just been successful. Slowly, as subtly as he could, Pavel began testing his bonds for weaknesses, straining against the ropes holding him prone.

"You, _Zmej_." Sulu's voice was deep and sonorous, and Chekov wanted to wear it as a blanket, wrap himself up inside the sharp consonants and spinning vowels. "Are guilty of the murder of Gary Mitchell."

Well, that answered that question.

"Gary Mitchell was a friend of mine," Sulu continued, as though he was remembering a story for his fat grandkids. "And you decided to murder him so you could switch allegiances?"

It was new information, but Chekov just swallowed it down, little rocks in his stomach to be locked away. Sulu and Mitchell had been allies and Chekov hadn't known. He had failed. Sulu was going to kill him for the murder of Mitchell, and no one would even put a coin on his eyes to pay the ferryman.

"I decided to kill him," Chekov spit back, trying to radiate fury and power despite being tied prone, "because he deserved to die."

Sulu chuckled dryly. "We all deserve to die, Zmej."

"Why do you call me that?"

"You would prefer _Pasha_ , like your mother used?"

Pavel felt his blood run cold, and for the first time since he awoke, fuck, for the first time since he had first seen Sulu, he had the distinct impression that this man was dangerous. For the first time, he saw the facade slip, and the shark-toothed monster peeped around the soft brown eyes. Chekov redoubled his attempts to wriggle loose from the restraints, but they held fast and tight.

Chekov started testing his bonds. "How do you know that?"

Sulu turned his back to Chekov, and the clinking of bottles sounded in the room. Pavel craned his neck to see what the other man might be doing, but the broad planes of his back blocked Pavel's view.

"I know a lot of things, Pavel," Sulu said after a moment, still not turning to look at him. "I know about your mother, sure. And your father and the hit he put on her."

Pavel gritted his teeth. He's always suspected, always thought Andrei had killed his own wife. But Sulu wasn't done.

"...made him a promise. And no one breaks their promise to Andrei Chekov. Do you know what the promise was, little Pasha?"

Sulu leaned over and held a glass to Pavel's lips. Hesitantly he opened them. If it was poison, it was poison.

The vodka burned in his mouth, but the words burnt worse.

"She promised she'd never love you more than she loved him."

"What do you want?" Pavel let his voice go dead. If Sulu was pulling out lies like that, he was trying to gain an emotional reaction, and the only thing to do was deny him.

"I want to know why you killed Gary."

Fine, fucking FINE. "Because I was going to woo you, you Cossack, and try to gain your protection."

Sulu smirked, and Pavel again saw the talons he kept sheathed slip through his front.

"What would you give me for my protection?"

"The same thing Gary took."

Sulu snorted, and turned his back again, to fiddle with the bottles. When he turned back, instead of a glass, he held a knife.

Pavel would have liked to have been working at his bonds the entire time, working a leg or an arm free so when the knife appeared he could kick Sulu in the solar plexus, catch the knife, and make his escape. But the rope still wouldn't give. So he set his jaw and watched Sulu approach, hoping that at least he would leave a pretty corpse.

Sulu placed the tip of the blade against Pavel's radial artery, and, with a flick of his wrist, smoothly cut through the bonds holding his left wrist down.

"I don't want your ass," Sulu growled, teeth close to Pavel's ear. "I don't fuck children."

Pavel brought his free hand up to catch Sulu's collar, intending to slam his head into the table, but Sulu caught the wrist before it had moved more than a few centimeters.

"Well played, Zmej."

Chekov snarled and spit wetly at Sulu's face. "I am not a child and you will stop calling me that."

"Okay," Sulu smiled and dropped Pavel's wrist, stepping out of range of the swinging appendage, and watched the young man begin to try and untie McCoy's spiraling knots. She was an expert, at this and so many other things. She claimed the knots came from field medicine - needing to restrain a patient on the battlefield so do an emergency operation. But Sulu had his own questions about that, and he'd seen some of the intricate rope work she'd done on her slaves and partners. He was pretty sure this was something the McCoys just _did_ and he didn't ask any more.

Pavel wouldn't get it untied, but Sulu respected the kid for trying anyway.

"You're just going to bloody your fingers," he warned, but the boy growled ferally and bit at the rope. "I could cut you loose," Sulu offered. "But I need you to agree to something first."

Chekov considered the offer, self-preservation and dignity warring in his gray-green-blue eyes. "Speak," he spit, and Sulu nodded.

"I don't want your ass, Zmej. I do want your loyalty."

"I serve no man," Chekov bit out, and Sulu smiled a threat.

A door Chekov hadn't seen, obscured behind the lush tapestry, clicked open, and another man slid into the room.

It was Jim Kirk, tall and golden and frightening. Chekov thought to himself that Kirk moved like a caged panther, the kind of man who measured every step with how many bodies he had to climb over to get there.

"Ru," Jim greeted Sulu, and Sulu, to Chekov's own surprise, took Kirk's hand and - what the fuck - kissed his ring, like he was some kind of king, or a God. "How are things with our friend Chekov here?"

"He doesn't want to join us," Sulu said, his voice dropping low and his eyes never leaving Pavel's face. "He says he serves no man."

Jim grinned a sunny smile, but his eyes were dead and it sent a jolt down Pavel's spine, that eyes that echo the sky should have all the depths of hell within them. "Well, Pavel. You don't need to serve me."

Pavel nodded and waited for the other shoe to drop. Men like Kirk always wanted something, and he would have it from Pavel with or without consent.

"What I want, Pavel, is your knife."

Jim produced the dragon-inscribed blade from his sleeve, jabbing it viciously into the table next to Pavel's head.

"I am going to captain the _Enterprise_ with McCoy at my side. Hikaru here is going to head my security force. And we want you to join us."

Pavel stared into the blank eyes. "What is in it for you?"

Kirk shrugged. "I see this going two ways, Pavel. First, you agree to join us, and you don't have to put up with perverts like Gary. All you have to do is excel, and you have a place on my ship. No one has to know we're affiliated; you can be like Ru here-" Jim ran a possessive hand up the back of Sulu's neck, and Pavel tried not to let his eyes widen at how Sulu leaned into the caress. _His_ Sulu, the man he had imagined had kind eyes. "-appearing as an independent entity," Kirk went on, pretending not to notice Chekov's distraction. "Or, secret option two, I cut those bonds and let you walk out of this room. You won't live long, but you'll make it just long enough to regret saying no."

Pavel furrowed his brow. "Why me?"

"I need the best, Pavel. I need the men and women who can be forged by the crucible of the Empire, and not defined by it. I imagine a ship where you can trust the doctor to treat you, where you know the security force isn't a roving band of rapists. Where we can safely sleep and know the people on board aren't trying to slit any throats that don't deserve it." Kirk smiled again, his ghostly mockery of true happiness. "You may say I'm a cloud-headed optimist. But there will come a day- a day not too far away - where McCoy and I will rule this empire. And you can join us at our side, or you can wait in your mausoleum."

Pavel waited for Kirk to go on, but it appeared he was done. No one stopped Chekov's hand this time when he drew his knife from the table next to his head and used it to free himself.

"I am Pavel Andreievich Chekov," he said, when he was finally standing before Kirk and Sulu. "The one they call Zmej, dragon, for the bite of my blade. I left my father drowning in his own blood to come and serve the Empire, and you ask me to betray it for you?"

Kirk laughed, and Pavel felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the sepulchral noise. He already knew that he would be joining this madman, but he needed to hear what he had to say, needed to know that Kirk knew what he was asking.

"We aren't betraying the Empire, Chekov. We're fulfilling its promise."

Pavel nodded and drew the knife across his palm, cutting skin and severing veins, warm blood running between his fingers as he offered up the knife that he had killed Gary with, killed his father with, and handed it, pommel first, to Kirk.

Kirk mirrored Chekov's motion and drew the blade across his palm, letting the blood drip from the cut he made, pooling on the ground at his feet.

"Oath," Pavel said, clasping Kirk's sliced hand with his, children making blood brothers. Kirk nodded.

"I do swear fealty to you, James Tiberius Kirk. I will be faithful to you and I will protect you and your-" he glanced at Sulu, distrust playing across his cherubic features. "-associates. For the good of myself, for the advancement of the Empire, and the glory of my homeland, I offer allegiance."

Jim had kept his gaze on Pavel through the whole rote speech. It was a common swear, a vow all cadets learned when they had it flayed into their skin by upperclassmen in their first weeks at the Academy. Jim smiled, then, and began his part.

"I do swear my protection to you, Pavel Chekov. I will be faithful to you and I will protect you from all who strive to injure you. For the good of myself, for the advancement of the Empire, and the glory of my homeland, I offer patronage."

"So it is witnessed," Sulu intoned solemnly. "And so it shall be."

\---

It was a downright domestic scene: Lenna in her chair, brandy snifter at hand, reading the feeds on her PADD and Jim at her feet, kneeling next to the stain he and Pavel had made with their mingled blood. Idly she raked her fingers through his shock of bitter-blonde hair, reveling at how it was so soft, just like him.

"You did well today," she mused, not looking up from the who-what-where bustle of the news. He leaned into her stroking fingers and she wondered if it was well enough for a reward.

The alliance with Jim had been well-calculated. Lenna had gotten her charismatic figurehead, a golden beacon of All The Empire Needs, and Jim was learning to control situations and people with a smile and a blade.

And he never forgot who held his leash.

Well, he hadn't, as yet. But she'd seen the flashes of emotion on his face, when he was asking about Chekov. She saw him bucking against the cruelty that the universe demanded - _required_ \- of people like them. She changed from a caress to a yank, using the man's hair to leverage his head back, exposing the scarred expanse of throat, where he wore a history of assassination attempts and scrappy orphan fights.

"It was dumb," she growled, "to imply you and Sulu are fucking. If the kid wants something, he takes it. And that means one day he'll buck for the person he perceives as your lover." She spit the last word like a curse. Love was a bitter word to Lenna McCoy, one she cut out of her vocabulary on a bloody afternoon in Macon, Joanna's corpse cooling in her bed.

She knew she was hurting him, could see the schooled eyes trying not to betray anything. "You're handsome and charismatic, James," she bent to murmur in his ear, "but don't you ever forget that I made you, and men like you are thick on the trees. You let me down, I'll get another."

He gave the slightest of nods, and she groped for her drink, holding the glass above his face. "Eyes open," she growled, and he struggled to comply as she poured the alcohol, slow and burning, onto him. She released him when she was done, and he bent double, forehead to his knees, frantically scrubbing at his face with the heels of his hands.

But he didn't cry out, didn't object to the treatment, so she forewent breaking the glass on him, and rang for another.

When he was done tending to himself, five, ten, twenty minutes later, Lenna had returned to reading, and finished her article before raising her stern hazel eyes to meet red-rimmed, bloodshot blue ones.

"Thank you," he muttered, and she smiled.

"Give us a kiss, Jimmy."

He did, pressing his thanks at her correction into her skin with every desperate movement of his mouth. Lenna smiled as her boy busied himself with the task of worshipping her. It had been a good day.


End file.
